


No Sleep Tonight

by fiacresgirl



Series: Summer of Sorrow [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Coping, F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 11:25:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6982765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiacresgirl/pseuds/fiacresgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p>    <img/><br/></p>
</div>Felicity struggles with how to move on after the events of 4x23. She gets help from Oliver, Lyla, and Baby Sara.
            </blockquote>





	No Sleep Tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quiveringbunny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiveringbunny/gifts), [Andthesecondthing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andthesecondthing/gifts).



> I had so much sympathy for Felicity and Lyla after last night's finale that I had to write this short ficlet. I have Felicity staying with Lyla and Sara because GIRLS HELPING GIRLS. Also because it makes no sense at all that Felicity would be staying in Thea's loft, especially after yet another ex-LOA madman tried to kill a woman/women there.
> 
> Good grief.
> 
> Seriously, I hope this is _good_ grief. These two deserve all the time to process and heal.
> 
> I'm gifting this work to quiveringbunny because sometimes we all need a little gift and to andthesecondthing for surviving a brutal winter semester. Girls help girls. Spread the love around!

Felicity wakes up screaming, lunging for her laptop. It’s a full minute before she realizes exactly where she is: in Lyla’s tiny second bedroom, the room that had been Baby Sara’s before Diggle left Star City to reenlist and find himself in the army or whatever. She’s sleeping on a narrow fold-out cot these days, and it’s not very comfortable, but one room over there are people she knows and loves who need and want her there, so it’s better than the loft. For now.

Felicity counts down from 10 slowly, focusing on her breathing. She forces her fingers to relax, and she releases the laptop and sets it carefully on the crate of her stuff occupying the room’s only furniture-free corner. There’s no nuclear holocaust to avert and no ex-League of Assassin psychotics to foil tonight. There’s only the memory of scrolling numbers, ghosts in the Lair, and Oliver on top of a taxi trying to rally a group of people who’ve never appreciated what he had to give to the city.

Oliver.

She hopes she didn’t wake the baby and is relieved to hear no crying and no movement from the other room. Maybe they’re getting used to her being here. Maybe she’s not the only one in this apartment who wakes up screaming, and Sara is just used to it.

She hopes that’s not true, but she’s a little afraid it might be. The showdown with Darhk was, after all, not Team Arrow’s first rodeo, and both Diggle and Lyla have seen war up close.

By now her eyes can see pretty well in the darkness, so she eases off the cot and grabs a pair of shorts and a tank top and puts them on. Then she opens the door to her room and creeps out to the living room. Her purse is on a hook by the door, and she tiptoes her way over there, grabs her tennis shoes, and opens and closes the door behind her. It barely even clicks. She listens carefully one more time, but not a sound comes from the apartment. She’s out. She’s free.

She’s trapped.

Felicity crouches on the tiled floor of the hallway and laces her shoes. Maybe she should run up and down the stairs over and over until she’s so tired she’ll _have_ to sleep. She discards the idea as too noisy. The stairwell echoes, and there are a number of families with small children in the building. Still, she flies down the six flights of stairs hoping to syphon off some nervous energy. When she gets to the bottom, she knows - just as she did when she was still at the top - it won’t be enough.

It won’t be nearly enough. She could run up and down those stairs for two weeks and still she’d see what the idyllic town of Havenrock looked like before the nuke left it a crater filled with rubble, skeletons of buildings, and dead bodies. She’s not going to think about that. She’s not going to think about that. She’s not going to think about _that_.

Outside the night is warm, and darkness covers much of the damage to the city. Here, nearly downtown, she is far from the Glades, but in the harsh light of day, you can still see the blood stains on the sidewalks. Not all of the shopfronts trashed in the riots have been repaired. She steps carefully to avoid broken glass, but occasionally it crunches under her shoes.

She should be scared out here alone in the dark, but she and the nighttime Star City know each other pretty well after all these years. She’s good at dodging the sketchier areas. She knows the fastest way to get somewhere safer and more comfortable. It’s not the city that frightens her anymore. It’s herself.

Felicity runs four blocks west and then makes a sharp turn north. She’s never liked running, but she likes the way her legs hit the pavement over and over. She wants to run, and miraculously they run.

Here there are more lights and more people out enjoying themselves. How they can get Chinese takeout only weeks after the world was nearly obliterated is something she may never understand, but it must have to do with the way the brain processes trauma. People were built to forget, otherwise they’d never keep going. The fear and despair would cripple them. Late night pizza, drinking with friends, hooking up at a club - the brain copes with crutches like these. At least for awhile.

She crosses a large square and makes her way past brick pillars to the side door of a large skyscraper. She bypasses the code with a modified copy of the Clock King’s universal key. The scar on her shoulder is not the only thing he gave her.

The man in the elevator gives her a bland look, and she nods at him. He’s got a bottle in a brown bag under his arm. It doesn’t match his Brooks Brothers suit or his silk tie, but the night and Star City make strange bedfellows of its citizenry. There’s more than one way to get to sleep.

She presses the button for floor 28 and watches as the elevator smoothly ascends, the numbers above the door winking at her in solidarity, one after the next. These numbers don’t judge too much, unlike the ones in her dreams. These numbers are alright.

When it’s finally 28’s turn to wink, she reconsiders. This one seems to have insight the others didn’t. Her fingers hovers over G, but then she thinks, “Fuck it,” and she exits. The marble tile in the hallway here is cold, but she doesn’t have far to go. In twenty strides, she’s there and knocking firmly on a wooden door. She listens carefully again to what’s happening on the other side. After a moment, she hears something, a light tread. She sighs in relief. The run through town hasn’t tired her at all. She’s still jumping out of her skin. She could run from here to the Mississippi River and not get tired. She could run like Barry around the whole world three times and still see the numbers and the craters when she closes her eyes. There’s only one thing that helps.

The door opens, and Oliver’s face appears. His hair is tousled, and his eyes are sleepy, but when he sees her face, his softens. “Can’t sleep?” he asks.

She shakes her head.

“Come in.”

 

 

>>\--->

 

 

“I don’t want to talk,” Felicity says.

Oliver nods.

“I just want to,” she motions at his body, “have sex.”

“Okay,” Oliver says.

“This doesn’t mean we’re back together,” she says. “I still have problems with what you did.”

“I know,” he says. He puts his palms up below her chin and holds her face gently, then he leans down to kiss her. She feels the press of his soft lips and she pushes herself against his chest, reaching her arms behind him to hold all of him against her as tightly as she can. There’s an energy to him, a force, but it’s restrained. He’s letting her channel him as she likes, and that makes her a little angry.

“You don’t need anything?” she asks. “You don’t want anything from me back?” She pulls her arms back and pushes up against his chest, but he snakes his behind her and holds her in place.

“Felicity,” he says, and then he’s kissing her, reaching under the hem of her tank top, hauling her up against his body and walking, “let’s just get you what you need. I’ll worry about me later.”

She slides her hands through his hair. It’s longer now. He’s grown it out in his new capacity as mayor, and it’s so sexy she _can’t stand it_. She pulls it in her fists, and then she’s kissing him. He tastes like tomorrows and hope and rumpled man, and the little grunts he’s making in the back of his throat are the sweetest sounds she’s ever heard. He pitches them both on the couch, catching himself with one arm and taking the brunt of her weight without a flinch. She slides her legs around him and rides his erection.

He’s on the TV all the time now, talking about the city, discussing plans for rebuilding and what to do with the many people who were hurt or made homeless by Darhk’s ugly plan. She watched him lick his lips between words yesterday while she was waiting in line for her coffee.

The young woman with long brunette hair in the line in front of her had actually squirmed. “Can you believe that’s our mayor now?” she’d turned to ask Felicity. “The body politic has never looked hotter.”

Felicity had bitten her lip so she she wouldn’t say anything too hostile or inappropriate. “A little too pretty,” she’d said. “He’s probably gay.”

The brunette’s face had fallen. “You think?” Then her face had cleared. “No. He was a huge womanizer back in the day. Wasn’t he engaged last Christmas?”

“Closeted,” Felicity said. “You know what politics are like.”

The woman had narrowed her eyes at her. “Hey, aren’t you--”

“Felicity,” the barista had called, and Felicity had grabbed her coffee and run.

Now she digs her thumbs into his sweatpants and drags them down. He laughs a little in surprise but then sees her face and sobers. Still, he’s very gentle. He’s letting her do what she wants. So she takes it. She yanks her shorts and underwear off efficiently and then eases down on top of him until she can feel his cock against her cervix. She pushes a little further so she can feel the pain.

His eyes open wider, and they are so blue. So good-hearted. She doesn’t want a charity fuck, though. She leans over as she begins to undulate and kisses her way down to his neck, sucking hard at the skin there. Mine, she thinks. Mine, mine, mine. Even if I can’t have him, he’s mine.

You can back off the hell off, brunette girl. He’ll never be yours. The thought is not as satisfying as the push of him inside her, but she holds on to it - and on to him - anyway.

 

 

>>\--->

 

 

When, after three hours, Felicity sneaks back into the Diggles’ apartment, Lyla is sitting on the couch waiting for her. Felicity closes her eyes.

“It’s not a walk of shame when you come back from meeting the man you love,” Lyla says. She looks sad. She’s getting too comfortable with that expression.

“Sara?” Felicity asks.

“Didn’t wake up,” Lyla says.

“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” Felicity says. “You have so much on your plate with A.R.G.U.S. and doing the single-mom thing.”  

“I was never asleep,” Lyla says. Her words hang there, and Felicity can feel how lonely she is for John, how empty this apartment must feel for her. Can you be homesick in your own home? Felicity thinks maybe you can.

“Besides, you’ve been doing the lion’s share with Sara. It’s actually been easier, to tell you the truth. She’s already here when I get home. I don’t even have to pick her up from daycare.”

“I just want to snuggle her,” Felicity says, “and slide her curls across my cheek. It makes me feel happy. Happier.” A thought occurs to her, and she smiles. “Do you know she called me ‘An Fliss’ yesterday?”

“You told me,” Lyla says. A tear runs down her nose and into the crease that runs to her mouth. Her tongue reaches out and tastes it when it finally makes it all the way down. “Three times.” She smiles too.

Felicity sits next to her on the couch and lays her head on Lyla’s shoulder, and Lyla tilts her head to touch Felicity’s. “Is today the day you’re going to figure out what to do about Palmer Tech?” Lyla asks.

Felicity shakes her head, but gently so as not to dislodge Lyla. “Today is storytime at the library. They’re going to read **The Very Hungry Caterpillar** and bring in real caterpillars for the kids to touch. After that Sara and I are going to go out for ice cream and watch the fountain.” She can get through today if there’s ice cream, caterpillars, and Sara’s chubby cheeks.

“Okay,” Lyla says.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” Lyla doesn’t elaborate, but the kindness and understanding in her face says, “You take the time you need. It’s been a long year for you. You’re finding the support you need and a way to see the world as good again. That’s important.”

“What if I never want to go back?” Felicity asks. “What if I just kidnap Sara, and we run away to Bali?”

Lyla kisses Felicity on the forehead. “It’s at least a 21-hour flight with a toddler. There are no non-stop flights. Sara’s attention span is 20 minutes. You’d be back by lunch.”

Felicity swallows.

“Don’t give yourself a hard time, Felicity,” Lyla says. “You love him. He loves you. Somehow, I have hope that it will work out, just like it will with Johnny and me.”

“I’m going to kick John’s ass when he gets back,” Felicity says. “Leaving you to hold the bag like this.”

But Lyla just sighs. “His hands stopped working. He can’t hold it,” she says gently. “My hands have still got some strength in them, so I will. That’s what marriage is. You know about that - holding on when the person you love just can’t anymore.”

She does. She knows. That’s why she goes to Oliver when the dreams come - because his hands, once so broken, have healed and can hold _her_ up now. And because he knows about grief and loss and blame.

He whispers, “Hold on,” when he pushes into her, and their bodies move like water together, rushing, shuddering. Like the water in the fountain, slowly, infinitesimally eroding the concrete below it, cleansing and clearing it away, one hard particle at a time.

“I do,” Felicity says, and she puts her head on Lyla’s chest and lets the tears go. Lyla holds her like she holds Baby Sara, and Felicity is so grateful for her friend.


End file.
